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Covey - The 7 habits of highly effective people

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I have a forceful personality. I know, in almost any interaction, I can control the outcome.<br />

Most <strong>of</strong> the time, I can even do it by influencing others to come up with the solution I<br />

want. I think through each situation and I really feel the ideas I come up with are usually<br />

the best for everyone. But I feel uneasy. I always wonder what other <strong>people</strong> really think<br />

<strong>of</strong> me and my ideas.<br />

My marriage has gone flat. We don't fight or anything; we just don't love each other<br />

anymore. We've gone to counseling; we've tried a number <strong>of</strong> things, but we just can't<br />

seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have.<br />

<strong>The</strong>se are deep problems, painful problems -- problems that quick fix approaches can't<br />

solve. A few years ago, my wife Sandra and I were struggling with this kind <strong>of</strong> concern.<br />

One <strong>of</strong> our sons was having a very difficult time in school. He was doing poorly<br />

academically; he didn't even know how to follow the instructions on the tests, let alone<br />

do well in them. Socially he was immature, <strong>of</strong>ten embarrassing those closest to him.<br />

Athletically, he was small, skinny, and uncoordinated -- swinging his baseball bat, for<br />

example, almost before the ball was even pitched. Others would laugh at him.<br />

Sandra and I were consumed with a desire to help him. We felt that if "success" were<br />

important in any area <strong>of</strong> life, it was supremely important in our role as parents. So we<br />

worked on our attitudes and behavior toward him and we tried to work on his. We<br />

attempted to psyche him up using positive mental attitude techniques. "Come on, son!<br />

You can do it! We know you can. Put your hands a little higher on the bat and keep your<br />

eye on the ball. Don't swing till it gets close to you." And if he did a little better, we would<br />

go to great lengths to reinforce him. "That's good, son, keep it up."<br />

When others laughed, we reprimanded them. "Leave him alone. Get <strong>of</strong>f his back. He's<br />

just learning." And our son would cry and insist that he'd never be any good and that he<br />

didn't like baseball anyway.<br />

Nothing we did seemed to help, and we were really worried. We could see the effect this<br />

was having on his self-esteem. We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but<br />

after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a<br />

different level.<br />

At this time in my pr<strong>of</strong>essional role I was involved in leadership development work with<br />

various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly<br />

programs on the subject <strong>of</strong> communication and perception for IBM's Executive<br />

Development Program participants.<br />

As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how<br />

perceptions are formed, how they behave. This led me to a study <strong>of</strong> expectancy theory<br />

and self-fulfilling prophecies or the "Pygmalion effect," and to a realization <strong>of</strong> how deeply<br />

imbedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which<br />

we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we<br />

interpret the world.<br />

As Sandra and I talked about the concepts I was teaching at IBM and about our own<br />

situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in<br />

harmony with the way we really saw him. When we honestly examined our deepest<br />

feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow<br />

"behind." No matter how much we worked on our attitude and behavior, our efforts were<br />

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